Joyous impact reporting? Yes, it’s true!

Finding the Joy in Impact: Why the New SORP Requirements Could Be Your Best News Yet..

So, you thought you were Middle Class eh?!

The reality is that many of us who thought we had dug our way up and out of poverty are now only a few pay checks away from despair.  We might be okay until the council tax bill comes in, the car insurance or annual railcard renewal, a dental emergency, or the credit card bill.  Maybe we are already not really ok.

I grew up relatively poor, but we were clothed and fed, we had carpets and curtains and our home was mostly warm. We weren’t massively worse off than the people around us. So it was a wonderful thing in my middle working years to ascend to the ‘middle class’ and a monthly salary, via professional roles informed by my lived experience.  I was able to support my (adult) children and grandchildren when things were financially tough for them. I even went on a few amazing holidays and made improvements to my home. Had I made this ascent in the 1980s or 1990s I might have made it to pension age in reasonable comfort and potentially been able to lift my children and grandchildren up a few rungs on the ladder. Unfortunately I hit my stride in the new millennium. During the last decade things have become desperate for many people in the UK, including my wider family.  Though I’ve had a reasonable salary, like many parents and grandparents, it has had increasingly further to go.

As this report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) shows, the decline is getting worse and is going to stay that way.  What do I feel when I hear that our dear leaders are considering tax cuts over investment in the vital shared public services that secure our very basic quality of life? Scared to be frank.

Our nation’s descent into poverty and insecurity, guaranteed by the greed and lack of compassion which seems inherent in our leaders, is painful to say the least. What now can my grandchildren aspire to when despite the best efforts of me and their mum, they are cold, tatty, and hungry.  What now, in the 2020s, does being ‘middle class’ guarantee?

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/07/uks-poorest-have-borne-brunt-of-cost-of-living-crisis-says-thinktank

I’ve got the International Women’s Day blues!

International women’s day is all about celebrating women, yes? We hold up those brilliant examples of women who broke the glass ceiling, invented things that change our lives, or spoke up when it was hard to do so.  And that is a good thing. But we aren’t all heroes.  We didn’t all do the right thing.  So this year I am thinking about my mother and women like her.  She only rarely did the right thing, but I want to celebrate her anyhow.

My mother was born in the 1940s, a female child of (so-called) upper middle class parents. Whilst her brothers were sent to middling private schools, she was packed off to a convent where the education was limited to say the least.  As a left-handed person she was hit across the knuckles in an attempt to force her to ‘be normal’, i.e. right-handed.  She couldn’t sing (at least that is what the nuns said) but was made to join the choir and mouth the words.

On completion of school she begged to be allowed to go to university and study history, which she loved and was good at, but her father considered it wasn’t worth the investment as she would ‘only get married’.  She was allowed instead to go to secretarial college and whilst there met my father, a merchant seaman.  Having very limited life skills it isn’t too surprising that she was expecting a child when she married him shortly after.  I think it’s fair to say that it was a brutal marriage.

The most amazing thing my mother did was to leave my dad.  I can hardly imagine the force of will this must have taken. It was the early 70s. Misogyny was Saturday night entertainment, and it was deeply shameful to be a divorced single parent of five children.  Somehow she kept us fed, clothed and warm and mostly in school.

Now on her own and far from her middle class roots and support networks the fact is that she was targeted and groomed by first one abuser and then another with pretty awful results for her children.  In the end something like stockholm syndrome set in and as a consequence she isn’t in a good place with her many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

My Mum isn’t an abuser, just not a strong woman.  Her heroic qualities are few. She failed to protect her children in important ways and we have lived with the consequences.  But she didn’t ‘fail’ on her own.  My mum had endured a lifetime of being second best and in the end she believed it. Her strength now is in stubbornness and survival.

I want to honour and celebrate those women who had a brief moment of courage but for whom, like my mum, the weight of the world against her was just too much.  My comfort is in the fact that love isn’t a choice.  I love her and it is visceral not judgemental. I like to imagine a different life for her. I see her sitting behind a desk full of books in a dusty university somewhere, sharing with students her love of history, kindly and with confidence. Happy #IWD Mum.

On what we monitor

Why are the most vulnerable among us so consistently subject to being demonised in public life? 

How is it that equity gains across the world on topics of gender and sexuality, cultural and ethnic identity, faith and belief, mental health and wellbeing, are so easily eroded?

Why do we accept brazen public use of terms such as ‘hard to reach’, whilst, despite our fantastic collective wealth, the needs of vulnerable people remain unmet?

How is public attention drawn away from behaviour which profits from the demonisation of others towards ‘horned manifestations’ of humans doing exactly what any of us might do in the same circumstances?

Why do we categorise and count excluded people in ever greater specificity, but consistently fail to achieve lasting equity for those people?

Does being identified, categorised and monitored as part of a grouping that you may barely identify with yourself provide any greater agency to address exclusion directed towards ourselves and others?

If you have to explain what BAME means, and then perhaps even explain why that grouping might apply to you, is it really useful to you as a person experiencing exclusion? 

If we agree a collective standpoint – that to stigmatise, exclude or racialize others causes damage, to ourselves and to the communities we live in – and measure that, might that provide a basis for more useful, more productive conversations about what is fair and kind?

Might we do much better towards promoting fairness, including people, and benefiting from diversity, if we use a signifier such as RES (racialisation, exclusion, stigma) to monitor our equity outcomes and impacts, rather than identity signifiers such as BAME or GRT?  

Should we be monitoring systemic effects on individuals, rather than crude groupings of identity- or circumstance- based characteristics?

I believe we should and here is why.

It is less divisive. 

If we speak about people who are racialised, excluded, and/or stigmatised we can be inclusive of many different people’s experiences of negative and inequitable interaction with systemic and social power, it accommodates intersectionality within and between people.

Here is a practice example. Romany people and Trans people experience systemic and social stigmatisation. Romany Trans people experience greater stigma due to the intersection of ethnicity and gender identity.

Instead of pointing at each other (it’s because you are Trans, it’s because you are Romany) but rather identify, recognise and note racialisation, exclusion and/or stigmatisation as the problem, can we point to a system behaviour (“oh look! There is some racialisation, exclusion and/or stigmatisation going on”), can we note the damaging behaviour and effect and focus our energy on that? Can we recognise stigma whenever it is present and know that it is, of itself, and not because of anything about the person it is directed towards, wrong. Can we fix problematic behaviour, rather than seeking to ‘fix problem people’.

It is relatable and better able to promote empathy between people than ‘identity politics’.

Whilst people enjoy different relationships to systemic and social power, many people have experienced, at least once, an experience of being stigmatised and felt excluded because of it.  This could be based on sibling order, playground jostling for position, class distinctions and cultural boundaries, professional or educational achievement; or it could be based on homelessness, refugee status, perceptions of sex work, care leaver status, physical ability, or on skin colour.  Although the scale and relentlessness of impact obviously varies greatly, stigma is relatable and easier to empathise across identity boundaries. One doesn’t have to share the physical or circumstantial attributes that are being stigmatised, in order to remember your own feelings of being shamed, abused, left out, second class.

I’m far from being first along this train of thought.  You can find quite a few articles and academic papers exploring linkage between racism and stigmatisation online.  Race as stigma: positioning the stigmatized as agents, not objects (Howarth, Caroline. LSE 2010) particularly resonates with my thinking. Here is the abstract

“this paper explores the insights gained from conceptualising race as stigma. Not only does this shed light on the construction and contestation of racism in the lives of the research participants, the material presented raises important issues for a social psychology of stigma more generally. These include an assessment of the embodiment of stigma, the ideological construction of stigma within particular histories, the impact of stigma on identity, and the ways in which we collectively contest and resist stigma. While acknowledging how stigma, particularly the stigma of race, acts to deny humanity, agency and liberty, I illustrate how stigma is collectively constructed, institutionalised and resisted in social and political relations. I conclude that a crucial part of the psychology of stigma must be a focus on the possibilities for communities to contest and transform representations and practices that stigmatise; that is, we need to explore the possibilities and conditions for stigmatised communities as agents as not (only) as objects or victims of stigma.”

bag

The border guard ripped one of the bags, not maliciously, it was just packed so tight and was so heavy that the cloth easily gave.  The other larger bag was pushed so hard under the bunk in the van that he left it there without interfering with it at all.  It was large enough that a child could have been suffocating within.

Charriddee

I wanted to talk about my experience and response to doing ‘charity’. 

As part of a previous job I was directed to deliver ‘charity’ from a religious organisation to families I came across.  This charity gift amounted to £10 for each child in the family for shoes as well as bags of donated clothes that I was to collect and deliver to the family.  Of course the main interest of my visit, and perhaps why I was tolerated when I had so little else to offer, was the payment in cash for shoes.  So families surely accepted quantities of donated clothes that they didn’t really need.  The final memory I want to mention that is seared into my mind, is the moment I watched a perfectly pleasant, capable and intelligent woman I had called upon, pulling a perfectly white child’s fleece jumper out of a black bin bag of clothes, with a perfectly round dirty black stain on the front of it.  The shame and humiliation I felt, at having so grievously humiliated her and poisoned the nature of any relationship between us was deeply painful to me.  I have questioned the nature and value of charity of this type ever since.  I’m not saying that sharing when we have more than we need is wrong, but the way that we do that, the attitudes we hold about doing that, and especially the attitudes we hold about the target of our charity is hugely important. 

The Truth about having Two Heads

Let’s be honest, like millions of us in the UK, the last few years I’ve been scrolling social media and bingeing box sets, sort of zoomed out of mainstream telly.  Since Covid-19 however, I’ve been watching BBC news. It’s weirdly quite good actually. Lots more women on than last time I looked.  

I suspect that I sound like that young adult who goes back to their parents for comfort and help when s**t gets real. You know that you called them bad names but, actually, you sense that they do love you. And, you aren’t sure if anyone else does right now.

Week four of lockdown has been really tough.  Or is it week five? I seem to have lost interest in counting.  In my role as CEO of Leeds GATE, a members’ organisation for Gypsy and Traveller people, we’ve had even more to deal with than usual. Things were bad enough with Covid-19 response.  But that didn’t stop our other public service broadcaster, Channel Four, screening The Truth about Traveller Crime. A nightmare hatchet job whose purpose in demonising whole communities of people remains hard to fathom. Shocking lies damn lies and statistics.  

My phone didn’t stop ringing, whatsapping, messaging last night.  So many people in shock, telling me again about hate crimes that resulted from the last hate fuelled broadcast against our communities.  I’m wondering if we should be grateful for lockdown? No arson attack on the office as a result this time. So far.

I finally turned my laptop and mobile off this evening; got off my unsuitable chair; and tuned into the daily Coronavirus update.  You know I said it was weird? I can tell you with no embarrassment at all that I felt deeply comforted to see Wills and Kate on the screen looking slightly zoomed like the rest of us.  Tough week eh guys?

And rightly so.  The Queen must surely be cocooned, like all our vulnerable, and venerated, elders. Notwithstanding this however, for me, the role of the royal family is to reflect our experiences back to us; to encourage us and to help us to feel that we are not alone. Even if the public broadcasters should fail.  Our Royals are always there, ours.

Oh I know. You can fill in your own thoughts here about status and privilege. But that’s not the point of what I want to say.  

So there is me, on the settee at last, Friday evening prosecco in hand, and gearing up for the zoom pub quiz.  And there they were, folks like me and thee, in my sitting room and talking to me about the importance of our mental health. 

Daring to soften the stiff upper lip to talk about our parents and grandparents and how worried we are. They think we need to look after our vulnerable people so much, nothing else matters does it?  This is tough for all of us. Do talk to someone about it if something’s feeling really difficult, won’t you? Share your pain with someone.

What I wanted to see; what would have reflected my experience; what would have been really, really nice?  Was that moment, which I’m sure happened but got cut in editing, when Wills looked directly into the camera and said…

“I want to speak to our Gypsy and Traveller people.  I know, of all our people (subjects, if you like), you are suffering with mental health.  I saw this in my role as a frontline helicopter pilot. Kate and I were already so worried about you before Covid-19. We were, weren’t we?” He looks at Kate. “Yes, we all were”.

“So I want to let you know – that programme on Channel 4 last night was an absolute disgrace.  I am so sorry for what you must have felt today when your neighbours looked at you in the shop.  I know that feeling, it’s absolutely awful. You feel they are thinking that you have finally revealed that second head, or cloven foot, that they always knew you had. The media needs demons, I know, but I have seen the way that they pick on you.  It could be even more than they pick on me”.  

“Things are already hard, you are bereaved, people around you are bereaved, you are unwell and can’t get healthcare, you don’t have a really safe place to live, and then this, the Channel 4 Dispatches programme happens. You shouldn’t have to put up with this. I know you aren’t like that programme made out because we keep having to give your lot OBE’s and stuff like that.”

“So I’m going to get their heads chopped off.  It’s okay. I just get really tired of this crap, don’t you?”

Anyway.  Kate and Wills, it was fine.  You looked great. Your ceiling was clean and no finger marks on the door behind you. Thanks for being there.

Crisis in Commissioning, or, “Why are you throwing our money down the toilet?”

Lloyds Bank Foundation recently published an important national report on the impact of so called ‘commissioning’ on small and medium sized civil society organisations.  I can’t say I read the report with any great surprise because it confirmed what experience tells us here at Leeds GATE.  Commissioning is a mess.  Not only is it a mess but it is actually threatening the survival of many of the small local organisations who provide help when vulnerable and struggling people need it most.  Available funding is being scooped away from local providers and into the coffers of the largest charities and those with large enough budgets to have staff dedicated to tendering for contracts. 

We fed into the LBF research with a case study of how local public health had commissioned for cancer awareness raising among key vulnerable groups.  Our members were named as target groups for the work.  Public Health had funded our organisation to develop local relationships with our members, developing effective techniques for engagement, and learning directly about what works in sharing health messages, via ongoing contracts for over a decade. We are a PQASSO accredited organisation with a track record of submitting accurate financial information and regular detailed contract reports to the authority. We have no wish to be a gate-keeper, or to ‘do all the work ourselves’.  But you might think that these existing relationships would be exactly what a commissioner would be looking for in seeking an effective way to use a small amount of money? 

Honestly, although it took days of work to complete the tender documents, we pretty much thought it must surely have our name on it.  Of course the commissioners would recognise that such sensitive work which highly vulnerable communities would be best done on the basis of existing relationships of trust and personal awareness that they themselves had been supporting for years? 

Not so.  The contract was awarded to an organisation from outside of town with no local track record or relationships.  As we anticipated it hasn’t been possible to identify any discernible benefit from the funds spent. Not a single one of our members (we have over 700 members from a local community estimated to be 3000 people) has mentioned meeting a worker from that project or receiving any information from them, despite cancer being an issue of extreme and current relevance to them. We can find no evidence of evaluation or reports from the project. The size of that contract, or at least the ‘lot’ that related to our members, was £10,000.  We complained of course, investing more unfunded effort into supporting the authority to understand why this wasn’t going to work. 

The local authority has just done exactly the same thing again. Commissioned a three year cancer awareness raising project, including Gypsies and Travellers as named target groups, via a tendering process of which we were entirely uninformed. I have contacted other local groups whose beneficiaries are also named as target groups.  They also were completely unaware of the commission. This won’t just be worth £10,000, indeed the successful applicant, a ‘community interest company’ based 75 miles away, has said it will be opening an office here whilst it delivers the project (likely putting desperately needed local funds into the pockets of a private landlord).  

How do I even know about the contract now?  Because the successful applicant, having only just now googled Gypsies and Leeds (which would bring you immediately to our website), has rung to ask for our assistance in reaching ‘the communities’.  Of course the budget is all allocated and none is identified in order to support engagement with local, established but often small and under-resourced, groups.  There is no doubt whatever in my mind that this project will have a negative effect on local organisations and therefore on their beneficiary communities.  I know this because it inevitably will either drain our resources in supporting their work without funding, or it will compete with or duplicate work we are already committed to doing. So, as local groups we now have to decide whether we attempt to – 

a) support the work for free (not possible or ethical as you would be using resources allocated by another funder for another purpose). 

b) launch a joint complaint with other groups affected (again using unfunded capacity and with clear reasons to believe that our complaints will once again fall on deaf ears and lead to no outcome). 

c) ignore the whole thing, accepting that our members will again lose out on funds intended for their benefit. 

This is much bigger than just sour grapes from an unsuccessful bidder on a particular commission. This isn’t just about whether or not small and local organisations should survive, although many beneficiaries of such local organisations would argue that they should.  This is about local money being spent in the name of local people.  It is about life extending knowledge potentially not reaching the people who need it. We hugely appreciate the work of the LBF in producing the Crisis in Commissioning report.  However, in commissioning organisations across the country, tasked with effectively spending public money, is anyone listening?  

2017

Packing

Going to Poland in August 2019. No idea if we are going to be rained on or heat-struck, or both.  Packing seemed difficult. I decided to go for everything in black and white so everything matches everything else.  Shoes? A smart pair, a smart but comfortable pair, trainers, flip flops. A sick glimpse of recognition.

Holocaust victims packing suitcases.  Five minutes warning, what would I take? Not knowing where you are going. Will you ever come back?

Perhaps you know that you won’t come back.

One suitcase.

On television I see a picture of a skip in the USA with migrant children’s possessions cast into it.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Where house

There is a warehouse, location undisclosed, where humans work, collaborate and live together without financial reward, but with food and a roof over their heads. From where they venture on missions of help, and welcome offered help on behalf of a greater good than themselves.

In a melting pot of those present – some for months, a very few for years, many just for days or weeks – every characteristic, every clique, every diverse politic, every predictable and familiar play out of humans together is there. And also something else I haven’t seen before, at least I can’t recall it, not in my lifetime. In action, expressed goodwill and generous intent, explicit and underpinning. This is a good thing to do. People work relentlessly, don’t take time off. Conscientious. Up early and stay at work late.

Professionalism.

Admire Tiny details of thoughtfulness and words. Being there and being pragmatic about it. “Oh I’ll stay here till the end, till its not needed. And then I’ll go to Greece, or wherever”.

People do a thing just because they believe it is a good thing. Vital and without question.

A Moveable Feast.
Since January
November
October
March
Since Thursday, Monday, A week.
Today

..”Oh, we used to do (such a thing)”.. and you realise they meant only a couple of weeks ago.

How much humans are capable of. How much good things, peaceable-ness. Creation. Care.